I agree with this assessment. It's taken me 6 weeks to have my husband (of 20 years and 4 children) to take over just the dishes. This means either he does them or he assigns an older child to them that day. I've cried 3 times and he is afraid I am going to divorce him. That's how much leverage and energy it takes to *maybe* take one thing off my plate.
Our experiences are very similar! I've been married for 15 years with 4 children. For many of those years, my husband was unemployed or doing sporadic consulting from home and I still did all of the labor. Two years ago I "quit" dishes and now he finally feels responsible for them, although they are still left dirty several nights a week. He only really started taking it seriously because he is afraid I'll divorce him. And he still pretends not to understand why our marriage has gone sour. Or he feels he has met the "good husband" standard of never hitting me and doing some household chores sometimes when asked.
It took me weeks to just get my ex husband to unload the dishwasher. I still loaded it and washed the hand wash stuff he kept buying with no regard for the extra labor.
I read Fair Play, and then tried to read Fed Up, but stopped reading it a few chapters in. Both books annoyed the shit out of me because they spent way too much time praising their husbands for everything they did and how much they contributed when they weren’t actually doing anything or contributing much at all. And why do we have to constantly praise and complement men for doing the absolute bare minimum? Also fair play plays into the tropes about maternal gatekeeping and “women’s unreasonably high standards” way too much. Anyway, I broached the subject with my (soon to be ex) husband, knowing that it wouldn’t really go anywhere, but figuring I would give it one last shot. I brought up the inequity in our relationship countless times over the years, and he never listened, so I knew it wouldn’t be any different this time, and of course it wasn’t. He was absolutely incredulous that I would even suggest such a thing! And of course responded with a bunch of emotional and verbal abuse. We separated a short time afterwards. Men don’t want to change. This system works really well for them.
I just watched the documentary and was shocked at how kind it was to misogynistic husbands. think the instinct to be kind to our lovers, even when they’re protecting, weaponizing, or falling into, harmful power structures, makes sense, and I don’t think women deserve criticism for wanting to be kind to those we love … but I couldn’t help wondering if the approach was just too nice to work. But maybe the book went into boundaries, including deciding when to leave the relationship, and the documentary was just too short for that depth. 🤷♀️
My reply is a year late but I wanted to write out somewhere my additional issues with Fair Play.
My husband and I bought the cards, looked at the directions, thought there were a lot of flaws, and so used them differently.
-The deck instructs you to pick out the ones that are most important and then assign them completely to a person. This is stupid because almost all of the cards need to be done.
-The deck also wants you to assign a task completely to one person, which is sometimes completely unrealistic. For instance, my husband and I split the kid's transportation on different days. Am I or he supposed to drive out of the way for certain drop offs/pick ups because only one person can own the card? That's dumb.
-They had only ONE card for daily cleaning and ONE card for "Cleaning". A couple tasks were divided out, like laundry and dishes, but most were under this umbrella category. This is ridiculous because all of the aspects of cleaning are what a lot of couples really struggle with, and it's way too much to assign to only one person!
We started by breaking down the tasks into 3 piles of who actually did each task. My pile was greatest, followed by the both pile, then his pile. This got the point across that yes, he does do stuff around the house, but it's all stuff that I also still have emotional and mental labor over.
We then focused specifically on the daily grind tasks, with the goal to shift some of them entirely to him and some from my pile to the both pile.
Only time will tell if it actually works, but doing the cards that way felt more realistic and bought more emotional buy-in from him.
oh, forgot to add another issue: the rule that if a task only has value to one person that that person should take it. That's fine and dandy when it's something like holiday cards...but not when it's something essential like cleaning or pets!
The author clearly has not dealt with someone who would rather live in filth than to clean.
My husband has claimed so many times that he can clean the litter box regularly...but he doesn't. If I don't step in, he will literally let the cat fill the box and then urinate on the rug next to it when there is no more room. I have replaced the rug 4 times in the past year. 4 times! And all 4 times he left the rug there for days until I cleaned everything up. It is disgusting.
this is just awful!!! do you know that the ammonia in cat urine can actually harm your lungs (and the cat's too!) and kidneys *even when you can't smell it yet*?? Just the small amount that is not yet smelly can harm your kidneys! It's toxic. I scoop that stuff multiple times a day if I can. I have two cats!
100% agree with this assessment. I read the book, watched the short film (which was like one long ad for the book), and found the weekly meeting the only helpful take away. I don't recommend it anymore because it's often the woman doing the work, begging for the man to join (or giving ultimatums) and a relationship/family is not a game.
I agree with this assessment. It's taken me 6 weeks to have my husband (of 20 years and 4 children) to take over just the dishes. This means either he does them or he assigns an older child to them that day. I've cried 3 times and he is afraid I am going to divorce him. That's how much leverage and energy it takes to *maybe* take one thing off my plate.
Our experiences are very similar! I've been married for 15 years with 4 children. For many of those years, my husband was unemployed or doing sporadic consulting from home and I still did all of the labor. Two years ago I "quit" dishes and now he finally feels responsible for them, although they are still left dirty several nights a week. He only really started taking it seriously because he is afraid I'll divorce him. And he still pretends not to understand why our marriage has gone sour. Or he feels he has met the "good husband" standard of never hitting me and doing some household chores sometimes when asked.
It took me weeks to just get my ex husband to unload the dishwasher. I still loaded it and washed the hand wash stuff he kept buying with no regard for the extra labor.
Oh and that was after 17 years of marriage.
I read Fair Play, and then tried to read Fed Up, but stopped reading it a few chapters in. Both books annoyed the shit out of me because they spent way too much time praising their husbands for everything they did and how much they contributed when they weren’t actually doing anything or contributing much at all. And why do we have to constantly praise and complement men for doing the absolute bare minimum? Also fair play plays into the tropes about maternal gatekeeping and “women’s unreasonably high standards” way too much. Anyway, I broached the subject with my (soon to be ex) husband, knowing that it wouldn’t really go anywhere, but figuring I would give it one last shot. I brought up the inequity in our relationship countless times over the years, and he never listened, so I knew it wouldn’t be any different this time, and of course it wasn’t. He was absolutely incredulous that I would even suggest such a thing! And of course responded with a bunch of emotional and verbal abuse. We separated a short time afterwards. Men don’t want to change. This system works really well for them.
I'm so sorry
I just watched the documentary and was shocked at how kind it was to misogynistic husbands. think the instinct to be kind to our lovers, even when they’re protecting, weaponizing, or falling into, harmful power structures, makes sense, and I don’t think women deserve criticism for wanting to be kind to those we love … but I couldn’t help wondering if the approach was just too nice to work. But maybe the book went into boundaries, including deciding when to leave the relationship, and the documentary was just too short for that depth. 🤷♀️
Boom.
My reply is a year late but I wanted to write out somewhere my additional issues with Fair Play.
My husband and I bought the cards, looked at the directions, thought there were a lot of flaws, and so used them differently.
-The deck instructs you to pick out the ones that are most important and then assign them completely to a person. This is stupid because almost all of the cards need to be done.
-The deck also wants you to assign a task completely to one person, which is sometimes completely unrealistic. For instance, my husband and I split the kid's transportation on different days. Am I or he supposed to drive out of the way for certain drop offs/pick ups because only one person can own the card? That's dumb.
-They had only ONE card for daily cleaning and ONE card for "Cleaning". A couple tasks were divided out, like laundry and dishes, but most were under this umbrella category. This is ridiculous because all of the aspects of cleaning are what a lot of couples really struggle with, and it's way too much to assign to only one person!
We started by breaking down the tasks into 3 piles of who actually did each task. My pile was greatest, followed by the both pile, then his pile. This got the point across that yes, he does do stuff around the house, but it's all stuff that I also still have emotional and mental labor over.
We then focused specifically on the daily grind tasks, with the goal to shift some of them entirely to him and some from my pile to the both pile.
Only time will tell if it actually works, but doing the cards that way felt more realistic and bought more emotional buy-in from him.
oh, forgot to add another issue: the rule that if a task only has value to one person that that person should take it. That's fine and dandy when it's something like holiday cards...but not when it's something essential like cleaning or pets!
The author clearly has not dealt with someone who would rather live in filth than to clean.
My husband has claimed so many times that he can clean the litter box regularly...but he doesn't. If I don't step in, he will literally let the cat fill the box and then urinate on the rug next to it when there is no more room. I have replaced the rug 4 times in the past year. 4 times! And all 4 times he left the rug there for days until I cleaned everything up. It is disgusting.
this is just awful!!! do you know that the ammonia in cat urine can actually harm your lungs (and the cat's too!) and kidneys *even when you can't smell it yet*?? Just the small amount that is not yet smelly can harm your kidneys! It's toxic. I scoop that stuff multiple times a day if I can. I have two cats!
100% agree with this assessment. I read the book, watched the short film (which was like one long ad for the book), and found the weekly meeting the only helpful take away. I don't recommend it anymore because it's often the woman doing the work, begging for the man to join (or giving ultimatums) and a relationship/family is not a game.